Welcome to Our

Tech Behind the Tech

Mini-Encyclopedia


Created By:

  • Alissa Rosellini
  • Suzanne Mathews
  • Pam McCuen
  • Jen Goldberg

About This Encyclopedia:


Who is Our Audience?

Teachers (elementary school through high school).

Why Did We Choose the Following Terms?

We thought these terms would be useful for teachers to know. While they may know how to use computer programs/applications, they may not understand the nuts and bolts of the computer itself. This mini encyclopedia is a great way for teachers to start exploring the highly technical side of computers.

Computers are so confusing. How can I even approach these topics?

Think about your computer as a desk with a filing cabinet:
  • You are the operating system itself.
  • Your desk is the RAM and screen
  • Anything you are touching is in the cache
  • The drawers of your desk and the filing cabinet next to your desk are hard drives
  • EVERY ITEM sitting on your desktop, in the drawers of the desk, and in your filing cabinet are your files and peripherals (a peripheral can be anything from a printer, microphone, etc.-it can be attached to your computer but is not part of the computer).

Terms:

Cache

Central Processing Unit (CPU)

DVI to VGA Adapter

FireWire

Motherboard

Operating System

Random Access Memory (RAM)

USB